HOLMES: The book on Elizabeth Warren

Sunday

May 18, 2014 at 1:00 AMMay 18, 2014 at 10:10 AM

Rick HolmesThe MetroWest Daily News

Elizabeth Warren's first campaign was harsh, grueling and the most expensive in Massachusetts history. Scott Brown and his supporters attacked her parents for lying to her about her Indian heritage, and attacked her daughter for volunteering for an organization that promotes voter registration. There were lies and tomahawk chops.But nothing said in the campaign hit her like the death of Otis, her dear, overweight golden retriever. In the audio version of her new book, she chokes up a little reading that paragraph.Warren carried her grief quietly for five more days, until the votes were cast and she had completed her improbable journey from Oklahoma to Harvard to the United States Senate. Then she cried a bit and went back to fighting for the middle class.It's not unusual for a new political player to write a book like Warren's "A Fighting Chance," one that blends autobiography with policy, showing the roots of the candidate's talking points. They make good gifts for campaign donors; they establish narratives for future campaigns. Publishers hand out generous advances for books written by rising political stars.But few pull it off as believably as Warren.The family anecdotes seem genuine. We see her as a child, watching her parents struggle to keep from losing their house after her father's heart attack; as a young mother, striving to balance family and career. Without excessive detail or cloying emotion, she tells of her failed first marriage, the death of her parents, the joy she takes in her grandchildren – and her dogs, always the dogs.Warren concedes that Scott Brown was the candidate voters would like to have a beer with. But if the question was which candidate you'd let babysit your children or your dog, Warren would be the clear choice.The personal, academic and public policy parts of Warren's story are woven together seamlessly, in her life as in her book. As a law professor assigned to teach bankruptcy, she learned that the experts and lobbyists who wrote the bankruptcy laws knew little about why families go broke. Most assumed it was a character flaw: Some people just can't handle their finances responsibly. In a series of academic research projects, Warren went to the families and found a different story, of good people brought down by circumstance – illness, divorce, lost jobs – and by a system weighted heavily in favor of the banks that lent them money.That cause, not political ambition, brought her to Washington. She fought – and lost – a battle to stop new bankruptcy laws from being tilted even more in favor of lenders. That led to a stint as Congress' watchdog over the TARP bailout. Then she had the idea for a consumer financial protection agency, got it written into law, organized it and left it, frozen out of the job she wanted by opponents in Congress and the White House.That brought her back to Massachusetts and to a Senate race she insists sought her, not the other way around. In her account of the campaign, as in her work on family bankruptcy, what stands out are the stories of real people hurt by large institutions, both political and financial.Those looking for new details on the issue that drew unwarranted attention during that campaign – the Native American heritage she claimed on a couple of forms but could not document to the satisfaction of Bay State Republicans – will be disappointed. Her story is unchanged: Family lore had it that her parents eloped because her dad's family didn't approve of the Indian blood on her mother's side; she never sought any advantage, in college or career, because of it and, besides, it's a silly, irrelevant issue.The issue ended up backfiring at a key moment, as Brown, who had been leading in the polls, awkwardly asked a debate audience to evaluate the color of Warren's skin to determine is she was being truthful about her heritage. The exchange made undecided voters wonder about Brown, not Warren.Small things can hurt a candidate if they resonate with a larger narrative. Bill Clinton's comment that he smoked marijuana but he didn't inhale may have been factually correct – he was allergic to smoke, he explained – but it reinforced the "slick Willie" reputation Clinton had already earned. Questioning Warren's heritage didn't work because the rest of her record amply documents her integrity and authenticity.Warren's book is not a tell-all – she's careful not to trash anyone who might be an ally in a future cause. And it's not a prelude to a presidential campaign, much as her supporters might wish. What the book – and her life – illustrates is that Elizabeth Warren is driven not by personal ambition but by a mission to give families like hers "a fighting chance." That's what resonates with readers, with progressive activists, and with voters.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor for the Daily News, blogs at Holmes & Co. He can be reached at rholmes@wickedlocal.com.

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